Marketing consultancy Wikibrands has launched what it is calling a “Blockchain Benchmark” study to show how adoption of the distributed ledger technology is evolving in the enterprise.

The survey, which Wikibrands estimates will take at least 17 minutes to complete, went live earlier this week. The topline results are expected in early March and will become the basis for a study titled “Navigating the Blockchain Revolution.”

Wikibrands, which grew out of the book of the same name, is trying to “braille these people’s opinions and predictions and provide a snapshot in time” as blockchain usage explodes across finance, retail and many other industries, managing director Sean Moffitt told B2B News Network.

“It’s like 1995 again and everybody is launching dot.coms or 2004, and Zuckerberg is just starting to plot out the rise of this supposedly weird thing called social media,” he said. “There is so much confusion and noise around blockchain’s ideal audiences, valuations, use cases, standards, accepted facts or smart future bets (that) I thought this study could fill some important gaps.”

Moffitt described the early results of the survey’s 30 questions as “very enlightening – some consensus, impressive optimism and a good measure of debate.” Besides blockchain vendors and startups, he said the benchmark would aim to get insight from corporate executives, boards and even the media who are trying to figure out where the technology — which initially came into being as a way of validating transactions involving cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin — is headed.

“I haven’t seen another pulse check like it yet, so I’m hopeful (the study’s) data and insight can be used as a monitor and a playbook for what stands to be among the top three technologies impacting our world over the next decade,” he said.

The Blockchain Benchmark’s questions are intended to be “industry agnostic,” Moffitt said, given that the technology is only beginning to be mentioned in day-to-day conversations at firms in health care, entertainment and the public sector.

“Various specialist communities — software developers, investors and digital change agents — really understand the ins-and-outs of blockchain and are quite zealous and fervent about it’s growth,” he said. “Paradoxically, very few business decision makers, IT people and particularly my industry brethren, marketers, have caught the same infection. They simply don’t understand or prefer to dismiss the fascination. Our job is to open their eyes to what’s ahead of them and how they can start planning in advance of 2020 when blockchain is no longer experimental but considered mainstream.”

Unlike previous technology evolutions, Moffitt said, blockchain activity is much more widely distributed and has a locus of interest in places like Switzerland, Estonia and Japan rather than the traditional hubs of Silicon Valley or New York.

“I find that empowering and fascinating, so we are pushing this as a global study with wide palette of respondents,” he said. “We’d like this study to map out the key questions, never mind the right solutions, for how blockchain adapts itself to their industries.”

Of course, Wikibrands is far from alone in trying to gauge the impact of blockchain. There are dozens of research projects under way with the Blockchain Research Institute, while market research firm IDC Canada is working with CIOCAN on a report that will look at major blockchain success stories.

Shane Schick

Shane Schick is the Editor-in-Chief of B2B News Network. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of Marketing magazine and has also been Vice-President, Content & Community (Editor-in-Chief), at IT World Canada, a technology columnist with the Globe and Mail and was the founding editor of ITBusiness.ca.
Shane has been recognized for journalistic excellence by the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance and the Canadian Online Publishing Awards.